Saturday, 6 January 2018

S.H.I.E.L.D. 'Fun' - Jan 6

AoS has returned from its’ brief hiatus. And?

And we’re right back at where we have started the S5 – it is a good, solid season; the interactions between Fitz and Simmons are wonderful…albeit nothing like what should’ve happened between them after the first four seasons, but perhaps now things will start to get back to normal.

Kasius’ brother has appeared on the scene: he is a bigger douche than Kasius himself, and… Kasius has father issues on top of everything… Wait. Didn’t we go through this before?

Yes. Aside from the entire Grant Ward & John Garret situation back in S1, there was the entire issue between Leo Fitz and the virtual copy of his father in the framework of S4. Now, perhaps, Leo will use his newfound knowledge to get the better of Kasius, who might not be so bad… Wait. Didn't we go through this before?

Oh yes we did – with Grant Ward and agent 33/Kara Palamas in S1 and S2. The result backfired on AoS very badly, the S4’s framework solution was imperfect because it wasn’t real even by the show’s standards, (the titular heroes ended up fighting a VR Hydra in a VR world…I mean, Hydra the agency, not the mythical monster), so there’s that. Now Hydra is gone again…only not so much; ‘Rewind’ might’ve shown it coming back; something is rotten in the U.S. military…and it could’ve been a much better plot, properly fleshed out, than what we got with the Kree – something akin to the Roman Empire depicted in ‘Gladiator’ the movie. Remember? “Are you not entertained?” Yes. That Rome.

…True, MCU has already done something like that with ‘Thor: Ragnarok’ movie: while Thor’s home world, Asgard, is that of the Norse, when Thor (& Loki) meet the Hulk (& Valkyrie) on Sakaar, we get a more Roman Empire sort of world, we get a more austere North meeting a more decadent South. Lovely. George Martin is so impressed – where did we get this sort of thing before?

Now, 74 years into the future the Asgardians apparently are not around, and the Kree have enslaved the remainder of Earth’s people; (as GotG movies show, there are humans living on other planets as well, so what gives? Does no one care about Earth anymore? Is that the Republicans’ fault? Do tell!), and the audiences aren’t too impressed: somehow, after the first 4 seasons, AoS just isn’t the same anymore; there are too many ups and downs…and mostly downs, and now we’re going for sympathetic villains again. The Kree have been such good villains so far precisely because they are not sympathetic; but now we got Kasius, Synera – his girl Friday, and…Enoch.

The truth isn’t out there anymore; (X-Files S11 is back, and it is worth taking a look or two); Enoch himself is a Kree – or is he? How exactly did he manage to come to AoS’ present, (74 years before the current time frame); and what is his endgame? As we have seen, he does not care about other Kree either, though that might really be a Kree thing: none of the Kree appear to care about each other, and the higher-ranking ones (mainly Kasius and his family, but still), also appear to look more emo than the vampires of the Twilight™ franchise, and that is just sad.

In other news, while we are talking about villains, Gryll is dead. We got a new character, Flint, who is a young InHuman, and is just the right age and looks to pass as Mack and Yo-Yo’s teenage son. Wait. Didn’t Mack was shown in S3 to have a younger brother who could fill this sort of a role in the show? Yes, but apparently that was a one-episode role, so he is gone, and we got Flint. Maybe he will stick around, now that Gryll is dead, and so’s the helpful telepath that we met in the previous episodes. Flint himself is an InHuman, just a telekinetic, not a telepathic one. Yay.

…And yes, this is a problem that AoS seems to be suffering in S5: none of the new characters are very memorable, or perhaps after the massive kill-offs of characters from S2 onwards the fans just do not want to invest in them, and so interest in AoS lags. Oh well, not all of the decisions can be winners, though ‘Rewind’ did bring the public’s interest back up, apparently. Guess we will have to wait and see where ‘Fun’ will take us from there.


That is it for now, see you all soon!

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